” In 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama promised to create 5 million “green jobs” if elected president. However, an analysis by the Institute for Energy Research (IER) finds that since 2009, the Department of Energy’s (DOE) $26 billion loan program created just 2,298 permanent jobs, at a cost of $11.45 million per job created.

In his New York Times bestselling book Throw Them All Out, Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer revealed that 80% of Department of Energy loans went to companies owned by or connected to President Barack Obama’s top campaign fundraisers.”

” Stymied by unsuccessful efforts to craft a deal with Chinese investors to save the company, struggling carmaker Fisker Automotive laid off most of its workers Friday.

Analysts said the move, combined with retaining a bankruptcy law firm last month, likely signals the death of the Anaheim company, which was founded by auto designer Henrik Fisker in 2007 with high hopes of selling highly styled hybrid sports cars and sedans.

That could leave the federal government essentially owning the automaker.

Fisker ran into a cash crunch after the federal government froze an Energy Department Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program loan in 2011. Fisker is supposed to make the first payment on some of $192 million it borrowed from the government later this month. Fisker’s tooling and other property make up the collateral on the loan.

Fisker has sold just 2,000 of its Karma hybrid sports cars and hasn’t assembled a vehicle in about nine months.

“Expect the assets to be sold for pennies on the dollar,” he said.

About 160, employees, or 80% of the staff, lost their jobs Friday. They were paid remaining vacation days but did not receive any severance payments.”

” LG Chem Michigan, which received a $150-million federal grant in 2009 and more than $175 million in state and local tax relief, has not sold any battery cells to automakers, but has paid more than $1.6 million to workers who volunteered for animal shelters and charitable groups and watched movies and played video games or cards, according to a report an inspector general for the U.S. Department of Energy released today.

“We found that work performed under the grant to LG Chem Michigan had not been managed effectively,” wrote Gregory Friedman, the DOE inspector general. “Our review revealed that LG Chem Michigan inappropriately claimed and was reimbursed for labor charges incurred by a variety of supervisory and staff employees for activities that did not benefit the project.”

The department reimbursed the company for questionable labor costs incurred in the third quarter of 2012, but Friedman was unable to calculate the exact loss to the government because LG Chem Michigan did not track labor activities in detail.”

When it comes to scams , the most pertinent question to ask is ” Who Benefited ? ”

Over a hundred million taxpayer dollars and no batteries yet ?

” Other findings included that:

• The plant has not yet made battery cells that could be used in electric vehicles sold to the public.

• Only about 60% of the capacity agreed to when the grant was received was constructed, even though nearly $142 million of $151 million of the Energy Department’s share of the project’s funding had been spent.

• LG Chem Michigan officials estimated that the government would need to spend $22 million more to complete the five production lines called for in the agreement, an amount that would significantly exceed the remaining funds available.

• LG Chem Michigan had significantly underestimated labor costs.

• Documentation to support the grant indicated that production of battery cells would transition from LG Chem’s South Korean facility to the Michigan plant beginning in 2012, but that didn’t happen.

• Fewer than half of the 440 expected jobs had been created to support the project.”

” Computer networks at the Energy Department were attacked by sophisticated hackers in a major cyber incident two weeks ago and personal information on several hundred employees was compromised by the intruders.

Energy Department officials, along with FBI agents, are investigating the attack on servers at the Washington headquarters. They believe the sophisticated penetration attack was not limited to stealing personal information. There are indications the attackers had other motives, possibly including plans to gain future access to classified and other sensitive information.

No classified information was compromised in the cyber attack, said officials who provided details of the attack to the Washington Free Beacon on condition of anonymity.”

” A pair of foreign-owned solar companies that benefited from a combined $84 million in Energy Department tax credits have announced they will lay off employees.

One of the companies, German-owned SolarWorld, was integral in the fight for tariffs against the importation of Chinese photovoltaic solar panels. The other, Chinese company SunTech, blamed those tariffs for its own layoffs.

Both companies benefited from the Energy Department’s stimulus-funded Advanced Energy Manufacturing (48C) Tax Credit. The 48C credit is worth up to 30% of the cost of manufacturing qualifying green energy projects.

Both companies announced this week that they will shed some employees. SolarWorld, which announced a 47% revenue decline in the third quarter, blamed a potential 37 layoffs at its Oregon plant on “illegal” Chinese trade practices.”

” “Bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.” That’s what the Democrats keep telling us. Sure, their jingoism came back to bite them in Benghazi, but at least the GM part is still true.

Oh, wait.
Workers at LG Chem, a $300 million lithium-ion battery plant heavily funded by taxpayers, tell Target 8 that they have so little work to do that they spend hours playing cards and board games, reading magazines or watching movies… “